Welcome to the Fourth and Final week of the CSA Fall Extension!
Just like the regular season, the customization period begins once this notification lands in your inbox (which should be around noon on Friday) and will end at 11:59pm on Sunday, November 7th. During this customization window, you can make swaps to your box and add extras. Pick up your box at your chosen location on Wednesday, November 10th. (Just as a reminder, if you'd like to change pick up locations for the share that is currently open for customization, please email Harvie support to request that change support@harvie.farm. Always feel free to double check with Holly to make sure the change was made. It is so important to the farm that CSA members have flexibility in their pick up location.)
This week's newsletter contribution is brought to you by M Mueller, Biodynamic farm worker, and is titled "Hard Freeze."
Temperatures in the mid to upper twenties last week produced a killing frost, a real freeze, a definite dividing line in the year. While our crops are well protected, looking out to the uncultivated world we see the decline of the leafy aspects of the growing season, the browning and falling that tree leaves have been experiencing now made general throughout the annual plant world. Now, after these bouts of night time freezing, the final growing process can draw to a close; this is the seed formation process, where the life of the plant body vacates the roots, stems and leaves, and now resides in the dormant, often tiny seeds. These tiny germs of future life, now fully set, have their dispersal mechanisms--falling from the plant, or springing from it or being torn from it in the form of a burr--ready for activation.
In some way or other, the seeds will winter on or under the ground, surrounded by the wide-awake forces of the soil, which at this time of year experiences its waking from the dream of summer. The act of true fertilization will occur when seed, soil, warmth and water awaken the dormant life next spring.
This process can't help but engage our emotions as we see death all around--or rather, not death, but life in its thin disguise as death. For these dying processes move us as did the living processes in the full flush of Spring. What prevents us humans from emotionally dying with the natural world, however, is our human sense of having in us the spiritual seeds of the future year, like the earth has in her the actual seeds of the future year. Rudolf Steiner, the great Austrian scientist and originator of Biodynamic agriculture, gives a picture of this process: to watch the burgeoning, thriving of Spring arise is like watching the sun rise in our souls; to watch the dying and falling of Autumn is like the moon rising in our souls.
Leaving you with this picture we thank you for your support of the farm during the fall extension CSA.
Much love and happy eating,
Holly, Andy and the ATG Crew
